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This time of year makes it very easy for me to stop and reflect on the bounty of riches in my life. Within the span of one week last month I celebrated a wedding anniversary, Thanksgiving and my birthday. Those three events alone give good cause for thanks. But my list certainly doesn’t stop there. The focus of this post is on the gifts our Nu Skin business provides and doesn’t include the abundance of other reasons to be grateful—such as having a beautiful, loving wife, wonderful family and friends, and good health.

For me there are always more than five reasons to be grateful and my list is constantly expanding. But for today, here are my top five.

1. The freedom to be an entrepreneur.
We are so fortunate to live in a country where choosing to be an entrepreneur and owning your own business is possible. Think about that for a minute. If you decide this is the course you want to take, to write your own paycheck and control your family’s destiny that’s exactly what you can do. There are many places in the world where this is not the case. With NSE they even do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. They provide the major capital necessary to operate your business. (products, research and development, employees, inventory, billing, shipping, on and on) Very few of us could ever amass the capital to do all of this on our own. With our business it takes as little as a few hundred dollars to make it happen yet you have the power and backing of a billion dollar company to call your very own. That is truly priceless and we will always be thankful for that opportunity.

2. Having a rock solid company to partner with.
All too often when people start a business they are focused intently on the short term goal of making money—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, if you truly want to build a long-term business, one that can last a lifetime and can be passed on to future generations, then it becomes very important to partner with a company that exhibits sound financial and ethical practices. NSE will most certainly be around for the long haul and has without a doubt illustrated these attributes throughout its first 25 years. Here are two extremely relevant examples that I’m sure you will appreciate. Commission checks to distributors have never been paid late and not one single commission check has ever failed to clear the bank. That’s a trustworthy performance to say the least! Clearly, because of this unshakable foundation, NSE will be around for as long as we choose to partner with them. And that is just like having money in the bank.

3. The capacity to compound income through leverage.
This concept is one of the key attractions to a Network Marketing business model. Our business is based on the principle of a lot of like minded individuals coming together to form a network where everyone does a little bit each. (we are super thankful for each and every distributor that is or has been part of our organization) It is through this approach that every business owner has the potential to grow a networked organization from just a few to several thousand individuals. And one of the most attractive and powerful aspects of this business is the ability to leverage the individual successes of a large group of people which can result in the generation of significant income. The beautiful part is that the power of leverage is available to everyone, regardless of background, education or previous success.

4. Ability to help others by giving back.
From the very beginning the success of our business has been based on the principle of giving back to others. Whether it was sharing the business opportunity, products, or mentoring and training new distributors the central premise is improving our life as a result of finding ways to improve the lives of others. NSE’s mission to be a Force for Good in the world (including the Nourish the Children initiative) has provided additional ways for us to give back. It is so rewarding to be involved with this company and to be in a business that cares just as much about its social responsibility as it does profits.

5. Living the lifestyle of our dreams.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution people have been trading their time for money. In exchange all they had to do was show up on time, do what they were told and not ask questions. Life was to be lived and enjoyed after you completed your 40 year plan (sometime around age 65). We are so grateful that this business enables us to live our lives to the fullest each and every day. We don’t use alarm clocks. There is no 9 – 5, five day week working to make someone else wealthy. Laura and I get to spend our days and nights together. We can vacation and travel at our convenience. We work with whom we want, when we want. We work from the comfort of our home (often in our pajamas) with zero time spent stuck in traffic commuting. We can literally operate our business from anywhere in the world. We don’t directly trade our time for money because we are leveraged—income continues to be generated even while we are playing. And that is an exceptional way to live life.

As we wind down 2009 and head into 2010 take time to reflect and write down your own top five reasons to be thankful. Accept that you may not have accomplished all you desire and begin now to take the actions required to make those unfulfilled dreams reality. Your gratitude list will more than likely be a lot longer than you might have expected and we’d love to hear what’s on your list.

One of the most powerful concepts developed by modern man is that of leverage. I’m talking about being able to do or accomplish more than you could possibly do or accomplish on your own. While reading a post by a young entrepreneur in Southeast Asia, (Donald Latumahina www.lifeoptimizer.org), I was reminded how success in our business relies to a great extent on understanding and mastering the power of leverage. Donald writes about leverageable assets each of us can build upon like contacts, passion, achievements, money, knowledge and skills. Everyone, regardless of background or experience, possesses at least two of these assets that can immediately be employed to move their business forward—contacts and passion.

Leveraging personal contacts is one of the first principles introduced when you started your NSE business. Although many new distributors don’t think of it in this way, this is why developing a list of your circle of influence is so important. These contacts provide instant, no cost leverage for you. With the advent of social media, leveraging contacts will take on new and expanded meaning—much of which we’re just beginning to understand.

And just as you leverage your contacts, you can leverage your passion—the driving force of why you started your business. Acting like a power source, passion will motivate you to go further and dig deeper than you normally would.

Are you currently using the power of leverage to achieve exponential results? One of the most attractive and powerful aspects of our business model is the ability to leverage the individual successes of a large group of people resulting in the generation of significant income. American business legend J. Paul Getty is known for stating that your goal should not be benefiting from 100% of your own efforts, but benefiting from 1% of 100 people’s efforts. Stop and think about that statement. If you are the only person contributing to your income, (which is the case for most people) what happens if you stop? With our business model that isn’t the case.

For example, if you have a group of 100 distributors each generating $500 that equals $50,000 group volume for the month. The NSE compensation plan pays you, at a minimum, $2,500. Duplicate this with as many breakaway executives as possible and you’ll be right in the middle of exponential growth for your organization and income. Now that’s leverage! It’s a beautiful concept, one that every distributor has the same opportunity to use and build upon.

So which one do you prefer: linear growth or exponential growth? Do you want your business to grow at the same rate month after month based solely on your efforts or do you want it to grow increasingly faster based on the efforts of your entire organization? I’d bet you prefer exponential growth. After all, it enables you to achieve more with less effort over time. And the more you use the power of leverage, the faster your progress will be.

Because leverage is so important you really want to make it a part of everything you do. Starting today, make it your goal to create a lifestyle of leverage!

It’s no secret that one of the keys to creating a long term residual income with our business rests in creating a base of customers who consume products. Have you stopped to really think about this concept and to realize how important the lifetime value of each customer is to you? (lifetime value equals the total amount a customer spends over the time they do business with you) Once you have an idea of what this number look like you’ll begin to realize what just a 5% to 10% increase in retention of customers means to your business.

Research finds that repeat customers spend, on average, 67 percent more than new customers. (Source: Bain and Company) So how do you get repeat business and earn customer loyalty?

Take a lesson from many small businesses that long ago grasped the importance of building customer relationships. They nurture their customers through personal interaction and over time learn and remember individual preferences and interests. They keep in touch with customers on a regular basis ensuring their products remain “top of mind.” (Craig Bryson’s Nu View technology will absolutely impact this—to learn more go to craigbryson.com and look in NuLab)

Let’s look at a couple of examples. Take a customer who spends only $25 per month. That equals $300 on an annual basis. If they remain your customer for four years that means their value to you without any increase is $1200. Now, let’s look at what happens when they increase the amount spent by just 10% per year. At the end of four years they are now spending $33 per month or $399 annually. (33% more than when they started—isn’t compounding grand) As you grow your customer base to say 100 over the course of a year you’ll see the following results. Total revenue in those four years is just shy of $140,000.

Yr. 1

100 x 300 =

$ 30,000

Yr. 2

100 x 330 =

$ 33,000

Yr. 3

100 x 363 =

$ 36,300

Yr. 4

100 x 399 =

$ 39,900

Four Yr. Total

$139,200

With the introduction of the new ageLOC products growing many of your current and new customers to the $100 per month level becomes a real probability. Even if only 5% – 10% of your customers do this you can see what potential exists. Now duplicate this 5, 10, 20 or more times in your organization and the numbers become pretty impressive.

So the next time you look at that $25 sale to a new customer don’t underestimate what their true lifetime value means to the growth of your business and income.